The Amazon Associates Central “build links” feature is cumbersome to use. Fortunately, Amazon supports a simpler and cleaner link format, though it is not well advertised on the Amazon homepage. To use, create a URL like the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/number/id

where number is the ISBN or ASIN identifier, and id is your user affiliate ID. Thus, a link for the book The C Programming Language would transform into:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131103628/barik-20

You can use Eli’s Amazon Link Generator to quickly generate URLs of this form, along with image information. If you’re of the programming sort, take a look at the Services_Amazon package for PHP.